


What a Woman Can Do

by Llywela



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-31
Updated: 2013-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-27 16:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/664114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llywela/pseuds/Llywela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were lots of things women weren't supposed to do – but Liz Shaw had never much cared for what society expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What a Woman Can Do

**Author's Note:**

> Liz Shaw and UNIT belong to the BBC. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this

XXX

Women weren't supposed to become scientists. At least, that's what society believed.

Women _especially_ weren't supposed to become world-renowned scientists with enough letters after their name to fill an alphabet.

Elizabeth Shaw had never much cared what society thought, so she went ahead and did it anyway.

Being naturally brilliant helped as well, of course.

XXX  


  
Women weren't supposed to be hired by secret government agencies to investigate aliens and associated invasions. After all, aliens weren't supposed to exist. Everyone knew that.

That one happened, as well. It was one of the more...illuminative, to say nothing of dramatic, periods of Liz Shaw's life.

A woman could achieve whatever she wanted to achieve, Liz believed, if she was prepared to work hard and stand her ground.

She was. So she did.

XXX  


  
Women weren't supposed to have love affairs. They _especially_ weren't supposed to have love affairs with colleagues ten years their junior. It simply wasn't done.

Liz Shaw didn't care much about what was or wasn't done, however, so she went right ahead and did it anyway - and refused to marry her lover no matter how many times he asked. Why ever would she want to do a thing like that?

She moved him in with her instead.

Life was good.

XXX  


  
Intelligent and highly educated unmarried women in their 40s weren't supposed to fall pregnant by accident.

Liz Shaw wasn't entirely sure it was an accident, however - perhaps there was such a thing as a biological clock after all, and even world-renowned scientists weren't immune - so she refused again to marry her lover and simply got on with things, the way she'd always done.

The baby was a girl. Liz was rather pleased about that and named the child after her mother; Margaret was perhaps a little old fashioned in this day and age, but it was quickly shortened to Meg. Her surname was Shaw, of course...but her father's name was sandwiched in between, as a concession. He deserved that much, after all.

XXX  


  
Women weren't supposed to combine work and family. They were supposed to have either a career or children, but not both. The two did not go together, especially not in the rarefied atmosphere of high-brow science and academia.

On the other hand, when a woman was world-renowned for her brilliance and had as many letters after her name as Liz, she had the power to more or less do whatever she wanted.

Liz Shaw believed it was a parent's duty to set a strong example for their children. So she continued to work, took her daughter with her wherever she travelled, and taught the girl everything she knew...including the truth about the wider universe beyond Earth, the infinity of possibilities that lay out there, and what to do if she ever encountered an enigmatic man with a rickety old police box.

Her career continued to advance. By the time her daughter left school, Liz was consulting on UNIT's Moon Base project, adapting scavenged alien technology for the benefit and defence of mankind  and still finding time to attend every single parent's evening. One had to prioritise, after all.

XXX  


  
Margaret Allen Shaw grew up knowing that a woman could do absolutely anything she wanted, if she put her mind to it.

She chose to follow her mother's example.

XXX  


  



End file.
